DIALED IN
Pro Tree Racers
Association Thrives
By Van Abernethy
T
he Pro Tree Racers Association
(PTRA) was launched in 2004 at
Mooresville Dragway and soon fea-
tured a wide array of race cars that
would gather monthly at the North
Carolina eighth-mile facility. In the beginning,
series founder Tony Brown simply offered 6.00
Index and 7.00 Index classes, which competed
under the moniker “Heads-Up Super Series,”
but when Brown partnered with a group of
racers who competed in a class called Real
Street, the collaboration officially spurred the
birth of PTRA.
The Real Street category was comprised of
small-tire street cars which raced heads-up. It
was an instant hit when the group began gather-
ing on Friday nights at Mooresville. “We can’t take
credit for inventing the class because ORSCA was
May 2017
doing the same thing in places like Huntsville,
Alabama, but we kinda staked our claim on it at
Mooresville, because nobody else was doing it in
our area at the time,”
recalls Brown. The
class paid $500 to win
and attracted some of
the most exciting cars
in the area.
Popularity for the
PTRA brand exploded
in the mid 2000s and
it was soon moved
from Friday night to
Saturday’s main event
at Mooresville. Among
the popular categories
within the PTRA is a class Brown called Pro
Tree Eliminator, which features bracket racing
on a .500 Pro tree that’s fully shielded, with no
CrossTalk electronics. Many cars within the
group have difficulty slowing down or speeding
up to compete in the various index classes, so Pro
Tree Eliminator is the
perfect application for
them. It soon began
averaging around 50-
60 cars when the class
was first introduced.
The series eventu-
ally expanded to nine
different classes in
its peak years, and
by 2006 Brown be-
gan touring the show
when neighboring
tracks started request-
ing race dates. The series enjoyed a steady rise in
car count and interest until the economic down-
turn in 2008 and 2009 severely impacted the
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